Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

It is a little curious, considering the devotion of latter-day men of letters to tobacco, that in their early days so many of the men who wrote on the subject attacked the social use of tobacco with violence and virulence. Perhaps, courtier-like, they followed the lead of the British Solomon, King James I. Their titles are characteristic of their style. A writer named Deacon published in 1616 a quarto entitled "Tobacco tortured in the filthy Fumes of tobacco refined"; but Joshua Sylvester had easily surpassed this when he wrote his "Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idely Idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least overlove so loathsome a Vanity, by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon," 1615. Controversialists of that period rejoiced in full-worded titles and in full-blooded praise or abuse.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

The variations in price of both Spanish and Virginia tobacco were largely due to the frequent changes in the amount of the duty thereon. In 1604 King James I, newly come to the throne, and full of iconoclastic fervour against the weed, raised the duty to 6s. 8d. per lb. in addition to the original duty of 2d. On March 29, 1615, there was a grant to a licensed importer "of the late imposition of 2s. per lb. on tobacco"—which shows that there must have been considerable fluctuation between 1604 and 1615—while in September 1621 the duty stood at 9d. Through James's reign much dissatisfaction was expressed about the importation of Spanish tobacco, and the outcome of this may probably be seen in the proclamations issued by the King in his last two years forbidding "the importation, buying, or selling tobacco which was not of the proper growth of the colonies of Virginia and the Somers Islands." These proclamations were several times confirmed by Charles I, the latest being on January 8, 1631; but they do not seem to have had much effect.

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